The Red Bulletin May 2019

Leo Houlding
into the -70°Cs,” explains Houlding. “If
you show your skin in that, you’ll have
frostbite within 30 seconds. Game over.”
The storm raged for four days.
Antarctica’s winds may be legendary
in their intensity, but their direction,
at least, is usually easy to predict;
something that the team was banking
on. The continent has a system of
katabatic winds, generated by gravity
flow rather than weather pressure
systems. As the cold air travels down
slopes, it becomes denser and more
intense, forming a reliable, groundhugging
pattern across the landmass.
The three men put their faith in this
colossal engine of air, but as their dropoff
pilot commented while taking a
sledgehammer to the lid of a frozen
fuel can, “Nothing is easy out here.”
It was to become the team’s motto.
Here be monsters
The narrative of old-school polar
explorers trudging across the ice to plant
a flag for their empire is one of conquest.
For Houlding, as a 21st-century polar
traveller, this idea is replaced with a
low-environmental-impact quest for
perspective on our place in the world.
“I’ve learnt how humble you’ve got to
be,” he says. “It’s not about world records
or firsts. It’s just trying your hardest to
achieve your goals while having respect
for nature and the elements. We’re
walking gently through, trying not to
disturb the ogres that can devour you.”
Antarctica is inhabited by many of these
Houlding’s team used kites of the sort developed for hydrofoil racing
metaphorical monsters and it was
inevitable that Houlding’s team would
eventually encounter one of them.
After a 16-day battle with bad
weather, poor visibility and crashes, the
team was far behind schedule. Houlding
drew upon his polar coaching. “You want
to finish ready to start,” he says. “Ending
on your knees, frostbitten, is not the
professional way.” The team worked to a
70-per-cent-capacity rule, keeping 30 per
cent of their energy in reserve and reeling
things in when they starting dipping into it.
However, when you’re traversing the
world’s most hostile desert, pin-balling
from exhilaration to the depths of fatigue,
it’s hard to gauge that 70 per cent.
Houlding was well past that as the trio
kite-skied down a sheet of blue ice and
towards the Transantarctic Mountains.
Coming off the edge of the Antarctic
LEO HOULDING
60 THE RED BULLETIN